By Thea Jarvis

Despite two days of confrontation and conflict in the “city too busy to hate,” church and student leaders said non-violence is still the most effective way to counter injustice.

Father Henry Gracz, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Atlanta, participated in a noon prayer vigil at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center near his church April 30, the day violence broke out.

It was, Father Gracz said, “prayer with a purpose,” a gathering of 300 or more “people from all walks of life with a very positive spirit about injustice being done and the excessive brutality” used in the Rodney King apprehension.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference president, Rev. Joseph Lowery, who spoke at the rally, touched Father Gracz with his comment that violence in the streets can only be stopped by ending violence in the “suites,” where power-brokers are making decisions.

Father Gracz said he has personally seen how those decisions can result in unemployment and unequal wages in the black community, where the strongest reaction to the Los Angeles verdict has surfaced.

“The intensity of the upset says it’s not merely anger; it’s rage,” he said, which has been “suppressed for a long time by a lot of people.”

The prayer vigil at the King Center included professionals, students, street people and clergy, he said, about one-third of whom were white.

Listening to radio and television, talking to those at the vigil, Father Gracz said he heard “a significant number of people, white and black, who were feeling rancor at the injustice of the final decision” in the Rodney King case.

Father Gracz said the neighborhood around Our Lady of Lourdes and the King Center was peaceful, removed from downtown violence, but that the upsurge in violence both in Atlanta and other parts of the country indicated that “we need to teach again the principles of non-violence.”

Martin Turner, a second-year architecture student at Atlanta University, said he spent most of April 30 through May 2 at AU’s Catholic Center, where he and three other campus peer ministers live.

Turner, 19, from Rockville, Md., said Atlanta’s street violence was unexpected. The melee at the AU campus came at a time when classes had been dismissed for pre-exam study.

The initial AU march, which took place April 30 after classes let out, was “small at the beginning,” Turner said, but “quite a few locals joined in. That’s when most of the violent incidents occurred.”

A second day’s march, organized as a peaceful protest, was turned back by police, who were eventually confronted by angry students when police entered the AU campus.

At night, students gathered on the porch of the Catholic Center, sitting outside in the warm evening air and talking of events in Atlanta and Los Angeles. During the day, the center had sheltered up to 40 students, some of whom needed minor first aid, Turner indicated.

The Catholic Center is located on James P. Brawley Drive, the street where campus conflict between police and students was centered.

According to Turner, non-violence has not been put aside. People need to be reminded of its value and effectiveness, he said.

“Two wrongs just don’t make a right,” he said. “This already happened in the sixties” and the black community has to “look to those who have already been there.”

They “need to be reminded” of the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the power non-violent protest has to effect change, he said.